The X-Men shows you DON’T mess with them, in X-Men #8, written by Jed MacKay; drawn by Ryan Stegman; inked by JP Mayer, John Livesay and Stegman; colored by Marte Gracia, and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Laura Kinney FINALLY gets her own book again in Laura Kinney: Wolverine #1, written by Erica Schultz, art by Giada Belviso, color art by Rochelle Rosenberg, and lettering by Cory Petit.
Tony Thornley: Welcome to X-Chat #18 Matt! Wow, can you believe that we’ve been in “From the Ashes” since April? Truly shocking, isn’t it?
Wait… something’s wrong here.
Matthew Lazorwitz: It is shocking, but what are your hyper comic book senses detecting, my friend?
Tony: That double shipping schedule is just doing a number on me. X-Men and Uncanny being at issues #7 & #8, while the others are at 5 at the highest. Doesn’t help.
Matt: The math is making my brain hurt. I completely thought that it had been that long. But time has no meaning anymore…
Speedrun Development
Tony: Gonna get this out of the way very first:
This was the best issue of this volume to date. It was also completely unearned.
I like this issue a ton. It also felt like a full year or more of issues, character development and all, preceded it.
I mean, I love what MacKay did with Beast. I LOVE Cyclops all throughout the issue (this is the hyper competent/hyper empathetic Scott Summers I enjoy). The X-Men were kicking ass as a unit. But it all felt a bit unearned.
Matt: First, just to be clear, I have not been reading Uncanny X-Men, which didn’t really affect my appreciation of this issue. But if I had been, and this was my first issue of X-Men, I would not at all feel lost. As a matter of fact, I’d be fine, because other than Beast being kidnapped and one reference to Scott’s encounter with the O*N*E*, I don’t need to know anything about what happened in this book prior to this issue.
Unearned is a great way of describing what was a great X-Men comic. We went from a couple small scale stories and a flashback that I had some real problems with, to an X-Men team working at peak efficiency together and kicking some serious butt.
Tony: Yeah, exactly. This was a good issue to jump into mid-stream. It was action packed, had solid character stakes, and was incredibly engaging thanks to both. But I think both of us probably felt the same thing a little bit — how did what we read previously get from there to here? There was so much that wasn’t built up — either in this title or Uncanny — that it threw me.
X-Men #8 opens with Warden Ellis showing off her new prize — Hank McCoy, who she’s selling to the country of Terre Verde for the crimes that Krakoa Beast committed against them. From there we see our other named inmates — Jubilee and Calico. There’s a confrontation, Calico accepts being a mutant (it’s a whole thing in Uncanny…), and the prison tries to beat her for it.
It’s brutal, and fascinating. But again, there’s no build up for this. In fact, the last time we saw Ellis, she was a begrudging ally to the Uncanny team. Here, she’s a straight up bigoted monster.
Matt: The sheer ugly bigotry from her is off putting in the right way. Maybe recent real world events have me a bit more on edge, but her use of “Mutie” feels particularly virulent here. Without reading Uncanny, and my only experience with her being from the FCBD issue, that seemed pretty much on target for how she was presented there.
The nobility of Hank McCoy in X-Men #8 is such a contrast to all those issues of X-Force we read, huh? Standing up and being willing to take a beating for a young mutant he doesn’t know at all is not something Krakoa Beast would do. He would sit back and allow things to play out and wait for a moment where he could escape, maybe while they are killing her. It’s nice to see this Hank back.
Tony: Oh my hell, this issue alone was enough to remind me of why Beast used to be one of my top five X-Men. His compassion for Jubilee despite his lack of memories of her, because she was his future self’s friend. His sacrifice on Becca’s behalf. His nobility in the face of this bigotry… This is the Hank McCoy that so many people loved prior to… probably as far back as the Fraction run?
Matt: That sounds about right for when Hank went from “at times passively amoral” to “at time patently mad scientist” [Ed. Note: And massively hypocritical], yeah.
And speaking of top five X-Men, Cyclops is written so well in this issue. He has been kind of the highlight of this run for me, but here we get a great Scott. He’s efficient, tactical, but still emotional. Writers get it wrong when they try to make Scott like Batman, this cold person who tries to cut himself off from his emotions. Scott is fueled by passion and rage — by fire (if you don’t mind me making a reference to his better half). And he also has a sly sense of humor. “I was NEVER fun,” is a great line with a hint of meta commentary and a self awareness Scott has developed over recent years.
Tony: And this is the kind of X-Men stuff I love. Scott Summers leading his team through an impossible situation with remarkable efficiency. They mowed through the guards, and legitimately I think they could have done the same to Blob, Toad and Siryn if Rogue hadn’t shown up.
I really hope this style of writing keeps up with the series from here on out. It was so much fun.
Matt: I enjoy a book that has a lot of thoughtful meditations on events through the lens of superheroes. But I also like a big screen action comic. If this book continues to lean into that, to making the character work part of exciting action set pieces, I will be all for it. Do quiet issues in between arcs with Glob Herman cooking quiche, because I enjoy that too, but this book is at its best when its at its most exciting.
Tony: We’re not reviewing itr, but did you check out Avengers #21? It was an all downtime issue, and gave both of MacKay’s squads some much needed character development. And we talked briefly about the diner issue (which we missed covering because of real life and the pace of this series’ releases), which played with both Scott Summers’ PTSD and his competency. Those issues are great, but this series has also had those action-oriented issues that frankly have been the weaker entries of the volume to date.
This issue balanced both, and if this is the style of story we’re getting from here on out, I’m here for it.
Matt: Funny, now that you mention it, you’re right. I would rather read more #3s than #5s, which was the actiony Upstarts issue. I guess seeing this issue, it made me forget how bland that was. I’ll have to check out that issue of Avengers too. I have dipped in and out of that book since MacKay took over, and there my favorite issues is definitely the mostly quiet issue focused on Jarvis.
Could we get an issue where Jarvis and Glob bake together? Can I live to dream?
Tony: No kidding.
She’s Back! (She Never Left)
Tony: The concept of Laura doing wetwork and getting into seedier corners of the universe is a great one. I feel like she can pull it off just as well as Logan can, AND as a young woman with her life experiences, can ensure the subsequent stories are different than a “Logan in Madripoor” or “Logan doing spy shit” story. So I really enjoyed about… 80% of this issue.
The whole idea of Laura stabbing guys that need stabbing is the whole Wolverine deal. So in Laura Kinney: Wolverine #, Laura, Kamala and Sophie visit the now defunct Treehouse (another decent callback to Krakoa), when Laura discovers a hideyhole being used for “prayers.” This leads her halfway across the world to… well, stab some bad guys.
This one gets a lot more grey than I expected, and it’s definitely better for it.
Matt: Both Logan and Laura have had insidious shit done to them. But Laura’s age and gender add a layer to it that the adult male Logan can’t match, and the type of stuff is very different. Having Laura be the defender of the mutants lost in the fall of Krakoa is a perfect mission statement for her.
The grey that we get towards the end of this book is what made it really work for me. If it turned out the person behind the kidnapping of Ivan, the mutant Laura is here to rescue, was just another human who was using mutants, it would be just another day at the office. And even if it had been just some random mutant with no real history, it would have been just an interesting blip, but nothing we haven’t seen before; remember under Bendis when Mystique was running the MGH trade? That sure got forgotten.
But Cybelle is an obscure mutant, a Morlock victim of the Marauders, with a very distinct connection to Krakoa. And unlike the villains in NYX, who are much more in line with traditional “world conquering” supervillains, her reaction to the fall of Krakoa doesn’t involve nation building or mustache twirling. For her, another mutant who, like Laura, was a victim, she wants to get hers, but unlike Laura, doesn’t care who she has to step on or oppress to get there. It’s cold, it’s disquieting and it is (pardon the expression) all too human.
Tony: I agree completely with that. It was great. But the moment it turned out to be Cybelle… I feel like the issue lost its teeth. Up to that point, Laura was efficient, brutal, and violent. She hamstrung a dude just a couple pages earlier, even though she discovered he was a mutant. But the moment the villain was a named character, suddenly it was like she had plot armor.
I’m not saying that writer Erica Schultz needed to have Laura kill her. But this was a villain who needed comeuppance for human trafficking, and she just gets turned over to the police. Then there’s a happy ending. I would have LOVED to see Laura beat Cybelle senseless, even something like stabbing her somewhere she would have survived, but would have been reminded every day that Laura is watching and will come for her… There are real conversations happening about vigilante justice right now, but this is a story about fictional justices against some very evil people.
Cut her damn fingers off, you know?
Matt: You make a good point there. Especially with Polly, our new character who is a mutant trying to help other mutants, having Laura be a touch more violent wouldn’t hurt. It would put her comfortably right in the middle between her and Cybelle, and allow her to make some observations about her new acquaintance who seems to embrace non-violence. I always find it interesting to have someone stand for something less traditionally super-heroic but still heroic in my superhero comics, but I’m a Batman fan so I’ve had Leslie Thompkins to look to for that for most of my comics reading life.
I hope that Polly becomes a regular member of Laura’s supporting cast, a cast that is pretty limited. There’s Gabby and that’s about it, as most others are dead or off on their own adventures.
Tony: I was thinking about it, but now that you mention her — it’s glaring that this issue is lacking Gabby, isn’t it? I mean, this story felt as much as a spiritual successor to All New Wolverine has any other has since then, but leaving out Laura’s little sister made it feel a bit lacking. It didn’t need to be much — a phone call, or a panel- but I would have liked to see her. Maybe in the near future though.
Matt: It has to come up, right? Throughout Vita Ayala’s New Mutants, so much of Gabby’s arc was about feeling disconnected from Laura and the rest of her family. Now that all they have is each other, it would be very strange to not have any Gabby. Schultz at least has to explain where she is.
Tony: Maybe it’s the arc after the Elektra arc? I know if I was writing the series, that would be my plan. But in the same breath, Laura rescuing Gabby in danger was the exact plot of last summer’s Blood Hunt: Wolverine… So we’ll see.
But hey, I’m game for an Elektra Daredevil arc. That was a great last page tease.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Check out Jake and Anna’s thoughts on this issue’s sister issue Uncanny X-Men #7!
- We are going to try to talk X-Men more often, because I, Matt, have thoughts about stuff from the issues we haven’t covered that are going to come into play in some upcoming issues.
- Erika Schultz being the company’s Elektra-Daredevil shepherd is more than welcome.
- Once again, we didn’t talk tons about art, but this was Ryan Stegman’s best issue of X-Men to date.
- Giada Belviso’s art feels like a younger Kubert, and that’s a compliment.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble. Follow him @brawl2099.bsky.social.
